Parenting Orders: Parenting & Children Matters
Your Children's Best Interests
Whatever this may look like in your particular circumstances
JB Solicitors has extensive experience preparing parenting orders applications and representing parents seeking to enforce parenting orders. Our parenting lawyers will vigorously fight to ensure you have a continuing relationship with your children and to prevent them from being exposed to harm.
Parenting Orders Sydney
Parenting orders are made by either the Family Court of Australia or the Federal Circuit Court of Australia. As the name suggests, they deal with the circumstances around the parenting of a child. Parenting orders are typically made following divorce or separation, but may also be made in other cases and other times.
If you are concerned about the well-being and development of your child, you can apply for a parenting order.
Who may apply for parenting orders?
- Parents of the child
- Grandparents
- The child themselves
- Others
Issues that may be included in parenting orders include
- Where the child’s primary place of residence will be
- Who the primary caretaker of the child will be (whom they will live with)
- The parent responsible for major decisions regarding the child, such as health, religion, culture and education
- When the child can communicate with, or spend time with the other parent, or someone else
- Who may collect or drop off the child when changing custody of the child
- The person responsible for making child maintenance payments (child support)
The Courts Considerations in Parenting Orders
THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD
Primary Consideration The Court Will Consider:
- The benefit of the child having a meaningful relationship with both of their parents
- The need to protect the child from potentially being exposed to physical and psychological harm
Secondary Factors The Court Will Consider:
- The views of the child
- How each parent can provide for the child – both financially and non-financially
- The child’s relationship with both parents
- Any family violence orders involving the child or their family
- If the child is of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent
- The child’s right to enjoy their culture
- The living arrangements for the children
- The time each parent spends caring for the children
- The number of children
- The age of the children
- The income of each parent
- The financial requirements of each parent to support themselves
- Housing
- Clothes
- Food
- School
- Medical
- Extra-curricular activities (on a situational basis)
1. Contact JB Solicitors to discuss what actions you make take.
2. Apply to the Department of Human Services to change your child support assessment to account for exceptional circumstances, for example:
- When your child requires additional medical care
- You and your ex-partner were previously in agreement that your child should partake in an extra-curricular activity or go to a private school.
- The assessment does not reflect your financial capabilities of paying child support.
- The costs of organising visits with your child are far too expensive.
Applying For Full Custody Of A Child
The terms full custody and sole custody can be used interchangeably. Full custody of a child refers to the situation where one parent has the power to make all the decisions regarding their child or children, including decisions regarding their care, welfare and living arrangements.
The law assumes that a child having a meaningful and regular relationship with both parents is in the child's best interests.
Parental Agreement
Despite this, parents will sometimes come to agreements where one parent will have ‘full’ or ‘sole’ custody of a child. In such an instance, the parents can write this agreement either in a consent order submitted to the Court that is legally binding or on an informal basis, such as a parenting plan. It is important to note that the legal option does not terminate the rights of another parent who does not have full custody, and this parent may apply at a later time to vary the order.
Mediator
If the other parent objects to this, the situation typically becomes more complicated, and parents must attempt to agree with the aid of a mediator at a Family Dispute Resolution Conference.
Family Court
If an agreement cannot be made in mediation, the matter will need to proceed to the Family Court to make a binding decision on how the child should be parented.
Parenting Orders: Seeking Legal Advice
The breakdown of a marriage leading to a divorce is a stressful experience in anyone’s life. The technicalities involved with learning how to apply for a divorce should be the last thing on one’s mind during such an awful time.
Our team of expert Sydney family lawyers and parenting lawyers help take the guesswork out of the correct procedures to follow when filing an application for a divorce. With JB Solicitors, you can trust that your matter is in the hands of professionals.
Call us on 1300 287 911 to help put the worry out of the process of applying for a divorce.
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